Edith John
by Jeffrey Greene
part 1
The first time Robert Freas saw her name was in an otherwise pristine copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things, while browsing at Daedalus & Son Used Books in Woodley Park in the winter of 1989. Beyond the mild irritation he always felt at finding ink signatures in used books, he had hardly noticed the name on the flyleaf: Edith John. It was a book he’d been searching for and to find it in such good condition, marred only by the name of some previous owner, was a rare moment of bliss.
He had savored the brief book over the course of several evenings, as he might make his way through a box of the finest chocolates, letting each sentence melt in his mind, as it were, before reading the next one and forcing himself not to gorge. The name on the flyleaf didn’t really bother him. He may have thought, in passing: “Her graffiti impulse aside, she has good taste.” But when the book took its honored place among the author’s many works on his shelf, he thought no more about Edith John.
That is, until a cold, rainy evening in September of 1991, at Garson’s Rare and Used Books, at 17th and E, when he spent a large portion of his civil service paycheck on a nearly mint condition copy of Robert Aickman’s Sub Rosa. “It’s flawless, except for the name on the flyleaf,” old Garson told him, handing him the book across the smudged glass counter. When he saw that the name of the perpetrator was Edith John, he shivered under the first cool-fingered touch of the mystery that was to occupy him for so many years.
This time he examined the signature closely. It was almost identical to the first one, written with a black fountain pen. Her small, precise cursive was impeccable yet self-effacing in its avoidance of extravagant flourishes. It reminded him of his late mother’s lovely handwriting, which, with his own awkward left-handedness, he could never emulate. It made him wonder if such superb penmanship, the pride of another age, was proof that Edith John was of his parents’ generation. Her taste in books made it difficult to tell.
After that, he began keeping a record of the times and places of each find. At Farley’s Used Books on Dupont Circle in January, 1992, he picked up her trail again with Heinrich von Kleist’s On the Puppet Theater and Other Writings. June, 1993, Basement Books: Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. A week later, at the same bookstore: Giovanni Papini’s The Devil. March, 1994, Volcker’s Rare and Collectible: Giuseppe Lampedusa’s The Professor and the Mermaid. Back at Garson’s, February, 1995: Selected Works of Djuna Barnes and E.M Cioran’s The Fall Into Time. April, 1996, The Idlers Bookshop: Yasunari Kawabata’s House of the Sleeping Beauties.
He now grouped the Edith John books in a special place on his shelf and would occasionally lay them all out, each open to her signature. If not identical, they were remarkably similar, as if she took great care to render the sign of her ownership, hunched over a cluttered desk, he imagined, with her fountain pen and a calligrapher’s steady hand. With all nine books on his coffee table, several questions occurred to him: why were her reading tastes so much like his own and so unlike those of almost all the women he knew?
There was only a single woman writer, Djuna Barnes, among those that he’d come across so far, and herself so dark, thorny and difficult as to be sui generis among all the women writers he’d encountered. Troubling themes, a taste for fantasy, pessimism and a predilection for Mandarin stylists seemed to be the preferred reading of Edith John. But doesn’t everyone, he thought, have popular tastes to counterbalance their serious reading? Don’t most of us reach for Nightmare Alley or The Big Sleep as often, or honestly, more often, than we do Moby Dick or Dead Souls? Didn’t she ever read pulp?
The other question was even more disturbing: why in the world would she read and then discard these marvelous books? Wouldn’t they form the core of a serious collection? He knew, of course, that it was was priggish and unfair to hold a lack of interest in collecting against her. He also thought that the uncanny similarity of their literary loves could be a bad thing in a relationship.
Not that he seriously imagined finding in Edith John some kind of dream woman. His hopes, he believed, were well-tempered with realism. It was a little off-putting, though, that this remarkable reader would buy Sub Rosa, all eight, unsettling stories of which demand to be reread, and then sell it, like some intrinsically worthless student textbook.
Granted, she probably got several hundred dollars for it, highly collectible first edition that it was but, still, it rankled. It made him ambivalent about meeting her in the flesh, which was one reason, along with pride and shyness, why he refused to play detective and ask the booksellers, many of whom he knew personally, what they could tell him about Edith John.
He was far from incurious about her physical appearance, but he wanted it to happen naturally. The problem was, how would he know her when he saw her? Maybe they’d already shared an aisle at one of his used haunts, and he had excused himself as he reached over her head to pull down a book. Unless someone referred to her by name in his hearing, he might never know.
And time was passing. In the summer of 1999, he discovered, after several hours of exhaustive browsing at Volcker’s, an unprecedented haul of three more Edith John books: Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus, by Sir Thomas Browne, Falk-Gillings’s terrifying The Hand That Feeds the Glove, and A.C. Curtin’s The Third Law of Solitude. He now had a dozen books bearing her signature, and it occurred to him on this tenth anniversary of their first “encounter” that things would never change unless he forced himself to act on his desires and find some way to communicate with her.
He couldn’t very well leave a trail of his own discarded books. He was forty-five, there wasn’t time for that now and, anyway, he wouldn’t want a distorted picture of himself forming in her mind from his unloved books. Consulting his notebook, he saw that he had acquired three of her books from Garson’s, four from Volcker’s, and two from Basement Books, all downtown stores forming a triangle no more than fifteen blocks to a side. He would focus his shopping there for the next several weeks and keep his eyes and ears open.
Their paths might never have crossed, had Robert failed to notice, one evening in the fall of ’99, while discussing with Rennie Volcker the relative merits and defects of J.S. Le Fanu and Algernon Blackwood, a book on the special order shelf behind the bookseller’s counter, from which protruded a ticket bearing the name Edith John. In his excitement, he lost the thread of the conversation, and after asking Volcker to repeat what he’d just said, nodded, then changed the subject to the book on the shelf, which happened to be one he’d been wanting to read for some time: Ice, by Anna Kavan. He asked if he might look it over, and Volcker happily obliged.
“Hope she won’t mind me handling her book,” he said, casually pointing to the name on the ticket.
Volcker smiled and shook his head. “She’s not a fool for books like you and me, Bob. No love for the thing itself, only the content. She reads and then exchanges them, several a month, like clockwork.”
“Tiny apartment?” Robert wondered, carefully memorizing the phone number under the name. There was no address. “Or maybe she has a photographic memory.”
“No idea, but it works out well for me,” Volcker said. “She buys at my price and sells at my price, no haggling. One of my best customers, right up there with you.”
“Sounds like my type,” he said, smiling to cover his nervousness.
“If she’s anyone’s,” Volcker said, and something in his tone made Robert peer curiously at his portly, spectacled friend, who had a touching fondness for Van Dyke beards, tweed driving caps and string ties. Robert wanted to know more, but didn’t dare ask, and soon the bookseller turned his attention to another customer.
He silently repeated her phone number as he walked to the subway, at the same time wondering if he would ever work up the courage to use it. It seemed improper, if not downright unscrupulous. He, a total stranger, one more squalidly hungry human male on the prowl, calling a woman’s home phone number that he’d dishonestly acquired.
For better or worse, he had always believed that when it came to relationships, to seek is not to find, that these things come in their own time, when one is most oneself, projecting friendly interest rather than neediness. If only he had her address, he could write a letter, which seemed less intrusive and scary for her, somehow, though still deplorable. To be introduced by a mutual friend, to see her face to face and gauge her probable disappointment before committing himself in any way — that was his preference, but it seemed unlikely to occur.
So he must do the alien, unpleasant thing: invade her privacy, either by voice or letter. He could, of course, revert to form and do nothing: resign himself to his library and his dreams. Or he could bow to the quotidian and go out with Sarah Feldman in Bill Processing, who on several occasions had indicated her interest.
The problem with Sarah was that he could never picture her doing anything but processing bills. Whereas Edith John... And now, especially after the richly suggestive conversation with Rennie Volcker, he felt that he must at least satisfy his curiosity. His heart was a walled fortress, not a cold ruin. And he’d always regret it if he didn’t.
Three days later, he finally called her. With his cat on his lap for moral support, he downed the last of his wine and dialed the number with sweaty fingers. It rang once. “I find our tastes in books remarkably similar,” he said aloud, trying to banish the quaver from his voice. Another ring. “And can’t help wondering if we have other things in common as well.” A third ring. His heart thumped, then a mature, but definitely not elderly, woman’s voice said, “Hello, you have reached 202-328-3757. Please leave your name, number and a brief message.” When the beep sounded, he felt as if he’d been shoved onstage at Carnegie Hall.
“Hello,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “You don’t know me, Ms. John. My name is Robert Freas, and I regularly shop at several used bookstores downtown. A number of books that I’ve bought—” he almost said, “over the last ten years” but changed it to “over time” — “such as (he mentioned several titles), had your signature in them. I became, well, curious about you, since our reading tastes seem uncannily similar, and — I know this is very presumptuous of me — I thought we might possibly get together for coffee some time to discuss this unlikely coincidence. My number, if you choose to call me, is 202-362-6172. I promise not to call you again without your permission. Goodbye and thanks. Oh, and if you’d prefer to write instead of talk, my address is—”
He tried to get it out quickly, stumbled over his words and, taking a deep breath, repeated it more slowly. He just got it out when the beeper signal went off again; his time was up.
He hung up the phone in a cold sweat. God help me, he thought, there’s no calling it back now. He felt split into two people: one proud of himself for finally entering the fray, and the other sick with dread that he had crossed the barrier of safe anonymity and alerted the Other to his presence.
Now that he had taken the irrevocable first step, he began to torment himself with the usual fears. She, unlike her elegant signature, would be a homely little thing or, worse, a big thing. She was already married or deeply involved. She would be eccentric to an unpleasant degree, and once the subject of their literary interests was exhausted, they would have nothing to say to each other.
Or she might be out of his league, some high-powered government type or bigwig at the Library of Congress and, at first sight of him, she would end the encounter as soon as politely possible. She would be outraged, up in arms that he, a total stranger, had dared to call her at home. She might be dangerously insane, a stalker, and he had just given her his address and phone number.
In vain did he remind himself that anyone with a mind capable of appreciating the kinds of books of which his small collection was no doubt the merest sampling would be not only eminently sane but probably kind as well. That Edith John was essentially a blank canvas was a continual goad to his imagination, and he spent a miserable week, both at work and at home, waiting for the ax to fall.
But he should have been better prepared for her capacity to surprise him, for her response came, a week later, not as a phone call but as a padded envelope in the mail. He was thrilled and a little frightened to see his name and address inked in her beautiful script. Maybe it’s a bomb, he thought, trying to defuse his own excitement as he bounded up the stairs to his apartment, too impatient to wait for the elevator.
The envelope contained a letter addressed, “Dear Mr. Freas,” and an unmarked videotape. The letter said simply, “Received your message. Please watch the tape.” He stuck it in his VCR and sat down. There was no preamble, no titles, and the video was in black and white. He assumed the camera was mounted, because the picture was so steady. He was looking at a carpeted study or a living room, one entire wall of which was lined with bookshelves. In the foreground was a straight-backed wooden chair. The camera lingered on the empty chair for a few moments, then moved in and past the chair to the bookshelves and slowly panned the titles.
He was impressed and envious. Clearly, he was seeing the personal library of a discerning and eclectic reader, who owned many rare titles that he himself had long sought but often couldn’t afford. The camera lingered for more than a minute on one shelf, on which he noticed several of the “Edith John” titles that he had collected over the years. So Rennie Volcker was wrong about her. She did keep the books she cared about. She simply bought two copies, probably from different stores: one to read and sell, the other, better copy, to take its place on her shelf.
Then, a voice — the same, rich, mature voice he’d heard on the answering machine — spoke off-camera: “Mr. Freas. Please forgive my caution in remaining offscreen. All this must seem very strange to you, but you shouldn’t be surprised that my little bread crumb trail of signatures has attracted other birds in the past, and some were not at all like the gentle and refined person I believe you to be. I won’t make myself so vulnerable again, at least not for someone unworthy of me. I admit to a certain fear of other people and hope it’s not presumptuous of me to assume that you, too, share my mistrust of the world outside of books. I was impressed with your voice and manner on the phone, and I’d very much like to meet you in person.
“But first, I was hoping that you might send me a video of yourself. I’d like to see your face as much, I assume, as you’d like to see mine. It needn’t be as scripted as this obviously is; just you speaking into the camera. I hope you have access to a video camera. You could show me some of your books, as I’ve shown you some of mine. Oh yes, I have more, many more than what you’ve seen. I couldn’t live any other way than surrounded by books. Could you? Once I’ve seen your video, I’ll send you another one, and this time, I promise, the chair won’t be empty. Thank you, Robert, if I may call you that. Please call me Edith. I hope to hear from you soon.”
He watched it twice more, then turned off the machine and considered what he’d gotten himself into. There was something self-consciously literary about the whole set-up, as if she were weaving a story in which his willing suspension of disbelief was compulsory. He was being asked to accept that, out of her loneliness and constant immersion in imaginary worlds, she had invented a character named Edith John, the elusive, isolated protagonist of her own intensely private myth, and he — and, as she’d admitted, others in the past — was the necessary antagonist, the white or black knight, who must prove his mettle, first by his reading tastes and now, apparently, by his performance on-camera and, of course, his looks.
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Greene
